WPF Through an Example: Introduction - Creating the Grid
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In order to lay out the controls as described above, we need two columns (since there are two buttons below the task list, each of which will need its own column) and two rows (since, vertically, there's one list and one group of buttons). The columns need to be of equal width, since the buttons will need to be of equal width, but the rows will need to be of very different heights, since the buttons will naturally occupy less vertical space than the list. The list will span across two columns.
Setting the height of each row and the width of each column (and, thus, the size of each individual cell) isn't very difficult. It involves simply adding some tags within the Grid tag:
<Grid>
<Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<ColumnDefinition Width="175" />
<ColumnDefinition Width="175" />
</Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height="400" />
<RowDefinition Height="35" />
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
</Grid>
The above XAML is pretty straightforward. First, we define the columns of the grid, and then we define the rows, exactly as described earlier, with two columns of equal width and two rows of unequal width. Grid columns are defined using the ColumnDefinition tag, and column definitions are all wrapped inside of a Grid.ColumnDefinitions tag. Rows are defined the exact same way, except with RowDefinition and Grid.RowDefinitions.
Notice that the dimensions of the grid are considerably less than the dimensions of the window. Some difference is to be expected, since the border and title bar of the window will take up some space, but I've subtracted even more space from the grid in order to create some empty space between the controls and the border of the window. If we add controls to the grid as-is, though, the empty space will only be to the right and to the bottom of the grid. That is, everything will be crammed to the top left. To fix this, we need to center the the columns and rows within the grid. This isn't very hard. Only the Grid tag needs to be modified:
<Grid HorizontalAlignment="Center" VerticalAlignment="Center">
Above, we add a HorizontalAlignment attribute along with a VerticalAlignment tag. Now, all of the controls will be centered in the window, with a margin between the controls and the edge of the window. Note, though, that there is also a Margin attribute for controls, which we'll take a look at shortly.
Using XAML, we've declaratively created a layout for our application's controls, and, so far, the XAML has been rather uncomplicated and uncluttered, just as it should be. In the next article, we'll start by placing the controls inside the cells of the Grid.
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